Snake Tales
by Andi Mack
Summary: Alternative fiction that I wrote as a break from my main one, "Overpoured". This is just me experimenting with certain elements in the fanfic. Features original character, Olivia Steele, Snake, and Otacon.
1. Cautioners

The last time I had looked at the clock, it had been midnight. I knew for sure that it wasn't anywhere near that time anymore.

I couldn't sleep and it hadn't been the first night that week. As a matter of fact, I had collectively averaged about nine hours of sleep in the past six nights. I turned on my back and hoped the hypnotic rotating of the ceiling fan would make my eye lids heavy, but I didn't have too much faith in this technique since I had tried it the nights before with no results. I decided then that I hated it and tried to imagine what a light fixture would look like in that spot.

My mind soon drifted to Snake and the inhibitor that I had injected him with. It hadn't had any unusual side effects and had actually been showing signs of working, which made Hal and I happy, but didn't make Snake out of the woods just yet. FoxDie was pretty unpredictable and it was certainly something we were keeping in mind even at the appearance of Snake improving. But I didn't spend too much time worrying about him. I kind of couldn't. He had told to me, in both subtle and not so subtle ways, that he was a big boy and didn't need my constant concern looming over him.

My relationship with Hal, thankfully, was much different. I trusted him which was more than I could say for some of the people I had known for years. Hal could quickly become a breath of fresh air after spending too much time in the gruff and jaded presence of Snake. He was genuinely pure and optimistic, but in no way naïve. He had his share of heartache with losing his sister, Emma and he didn't know but, it helped me to deal with Evan's death better when I talked to him. I could, however, tell there was something darker to him, something that went much deeper than the death of Emma. But, as long as he never brought it up, I was okay with never finding out.

I was abnormally unstressed, despite my unique situation, but I still laid there, unable to even pretend like the ceiling fan watching trick was actually going to work this night. And since it was mid November in New York, all it was doing was making me unnecessarily cold.

I was in the process of talking myself into getting up to turn it off when I heard a deep moan from the room right next to mine. Privacy was out of the question since the walls were paper thin and I had learned to ignore sounds that escaped their respective rooms at night but there was something troubling about that moan, which could only belong to Snake. I listened to him until they became too uncomfortable for me to bare from my side of the wall any longer.

Whatever Snake was dreaming about, it had caused him to break out into a cold sweat. His fists were clutched tightly to the sheets and his breathing was growing heavier. I could almost hear his heart beating double what it should.

I called to him once, but it did nothing to penetrate whatever that was haunting him.

"Wake up," I shook him lightly by his shoulder. I quickly forgot everything I had heard about not waking someone when they are having a nightmare when it seemed to be getting more intense. He violently jerked around like he was trying to leap out of his own skin.

"Snake, you're having a nightmare. Wake up!"

I shook him hard, with both hands now grasped around his shoulders.

His eyes snapped open almost the same time I saw the gun appear in the front of my face. His eyes struggled to adjust in the light in the room as his breathing began to regulate again. I backed off slowly, knowing there was a good chance he didn't keep an empty handgun next to him.

"Whoa! Snake...it's me," I said, my hands locked in a surrender.

"Olivia?" He lowered his gun. "What are you doing?"

"You were having some sort of a nightmare. It sounded pretty intense so, I came over to check on you." He took a deep breath and ran his hands over his face. "What was it about?"

"Huh?"

"Your nightmare."

"Oh. Don't remember."

"Do you have them often?"

"No."

"I really hope it's not the serum, then."

He shook his head.

"It's not that. I'm sorry about..."

"It's fine. You kinda owed me that, really. I remember not so long ago, it was the other way around." I put my hand on his shoulder. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Good." I started towards the door, thinking about how I would just stare at the ceiling fan until dawn. When I looked back to Snake, his eyes shifted from my direction to the floor.

"Snake. I know I'm out of line in asking this but, do you think I could sleep in here? Just for tonight."

"What? Is something wrong?"

I knew how crazy it sounded and even if I hadn't, all I had to do was look at Snake's face. It was too late to back out, so, I continued.

"No, well, the truth is…I've averaged about nine hours of sleep in the past week or so and I don't know what else to do. I'm a walking zombie. I even tried the warm milk thing that my mom used to give me when I couldn't sleep as a child. I've read, completed a whole book of crossword puzzles...another week of this and I'll probably be forced to do something like... take up crocheting."

"I don't know how sleeping in here is going to help anything..."

"I'm desperate. I think the only thing I haven't tried is another bed."

I had already prepared myself for a "no" when I noticed Snake shift his body over, opening up enough space for me to slide into. Before I could think about how too easy that had been, I climbed in and quickly, as if it was a limited time offer.

We laid there on our backs with a slightly awkward foot of space between us.

"Thanks, Snake. I promise this will be the only night I cramp your space like this."

"I could think of worst things."

I looked over at him. Even in the almost no light of the room, I could clearly make out a smirk on his face.

"You don't have a ceiling fan," I said aloud when I noticed a light fixture in the place of where the fan was in my room. I had never actually noticed myself failing at an attempt to make small talk until that moment.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"No...oh God, that was really random, wasn't it? I'm sorry."

I placed my hands over my mouth as a physical reminder to stop talking.

"Is this uncomfortable to you?"

"Oh, heavens yes but, it's not you. I just realized that I haven't done this," I said gesturing from him to me, "sleep in the bed with another man, since Evan. That's really pathetic, I know..."

"Not at all."

"If I'm keeping you up, I can go back to my room and be an insomniac on my own. I don't want to drag you down with me."

"It's okay. Not much was coming out of sleep for me tonight, anyway."

"You know, nightmares can spring from a lot of different things, Snake. Stress, guilt, even unresolved issues."

He kept his gaze to the ceiling.

"I was back in Zanzibar Land. I haven't thought about that place in years."

"What happened to you there?"

"The kind of things that gives you nightmares."

"Have you ever thought about going to therapy?"

"If I tell you no, are you going to play psychiatrist with me," I could tell it was a thought he was not fond of.

"No, of course not. But, wouldn't it help to talk about these things with someone?"

"It's not anything I enjoy remembering especially in order to tell other people."

His hands moved to behind his head. It was the most relaxed he had ever appeared to me though I was sure his muscles were still tense and taunt, waiting to react to anything that might happen.

"I wish life would have been different for you. I wish you could have grown up in suburbia or something."

"You mean more like you?"

"Yeah, I guess so," I propped myself on my elbow to face him, "Don't you ever wonder what you're life could have been like, Snake?"

"I try not to spend too much time thinking about the stuff that I can't change."

I imagined Snake practiced a lot of this coolness on the battlefield as well. It was probably one of the reasons he was still alive.

"Well, I think you should have at least continued to race huskies."

He looked amused that I knew that.

"You're probably right but, how did you..."

"Hal told me."

"Hmm. Right."

My eyes rested on his arms again in the realization that it was the first time I had seen them uncovered. The scars on them looked like a map of his life. On impulse, I reached out and ran my hand lightly over his upper arm, where I had noticed them the most.

"There's so many of them..."

"Yeah. I've begun to forget how I got most of them."

"Well, this one", I pointed out the one that had caught my eye first, "was probably from a knife."

"How can you tell?"

"I've had a lot of practice. I've seen a lot of scars being a nurse. They tend to tell the truth more than some of the patients do," He let me run my fingers over it a few more times, as if it was a road I wanted to travel down as well. I met his intense blue gaze, which, for the first time he didn't hurry to reposition once being caught, "Do you remember which one hurt the most?"

Out of the darkness, I felt his hand reach up and caress the scar on the right side of my own face.

"This one."

I knew what was happening and all I could think about was how it shouldn't be. But, what I _knew_ only made it as far as a thought and never actually developed into a verbal or physical attempt at restraint.

The moment our lips met, I came to conclusion that Snake was one of those things I never thought I desired until I had it. I felt his arms wrapping around my waist to pull me in closer to him, daring any space at all to come between us now. My hands moved wildly to adjust and finally settled right above his hips. My fingertips reached a scar that from touch, I figured to be an electric burn of some kind but didn't give more than half of a second's thought to. Suddenly, I felt him pull away.

"Snake?"

He looked at me as though I was a lamb he had just slaughtered and then quickly looked away.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what happened."

In a split second, Snake's whole demeanor resembled what it had ten months ago, distant and cold. I felt like we were sitting in two separate rooms.

"What are you sorry for? For allowing yourself to feel something?"

"It's more complicated than that."

"What's so complicated about it?"

I didn't mean to sound like I was challenging him, but I was immediately aware of it coming off that way. I knew he had his reasons and that they were probably damn good ones too, but something had awaken in me and I couldn't ignore it as easily as he had seemed to.

"Feelings aren't a part of what I do, Olivia. "

It was his tone that took me aback. For the first time, it made sense to me that maybe everything he had done had been a sacrifice and not some selfish lifestyle choice. I didn't know what to say or if I should even say anything at all.

"I understand," I assured him anyway.

Though the silence that settled was a quiet understanding of sorts, as I laid there, I couldn't think of one reason I should actually still be laying there. This was so far from my simple desire to get sleep and I couldn't even begin to link the conversations it had taken to get from one extreme to the next. "You're pretty incredible, Snake."

"What?"

"A lesser man who would have seen what you've seen, done what you've done...they would have cracked."

"Maybe I haven't cracked but, I'm certainly not whole."

"I don't think anyone is," I reminded him, "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"How old were you during your time on Shadow Moses Island?"

"Thirty-three, I think."

"Thirty-three? You were so young..."

"Not on the battlefield."

"So, that means you're...Forty-one now, right?"

"Yes. But, why does it matter?"

"It's just my attempt to try and understand Solid Snake better."

"You mean it's an attempt to try and figure out exactly when I became so screwed up."

I laughed quietly and shook my head. Snake's humor rarely got past me no matter how wrapped up in sarcasm or misplaced tones it was.

"So are you damaged goods, Snake? I wouldn't have ever known if you wouldn't have told me."

A flicker of sunlight on the wall next to me caught my eye.

"It's 5:40," he told me looking up from a clock he had sitting on the floor next to him.

"I doubt I'm going to be much good to Hal today. I should get back to my own bed, though."

Leaving turned out to be the most awkward part of it all despite some of the other things that had happened. I smoothed over my hair with my hands and then my pajamas as if we had done something regrettable but, looking at Snake light his first cigarette of the morning made me remember just how many different kinds of regrettable there actually are.

I knew it was too soon to wonder what could have been since we hadn't even almost had anything to begin with. But the idea of not even having the chance to wonder is what hung over me. Life had lead both of us on very different paths and our worlds had collided due to such a strange chain of events that it was almost necessary to think that maybe we had defied something much bigger than us for meeting at all. But even if we had, there wasn't a single part of me that regretted it.

I watched the rest of the sunrise dance across my own walls from my own bed. But the sounds of shuffling downstairs followed by the faint aroma of Hal-brewed coffee signified my day had begun. Whether I wanted it to or not.

Hal and Snake both looked back at me from the table when I entered the kitchen but Hal was the only one who spoke.

"You look like hell", he informed me of before I could mutter my first words. I hadn't looked in the mirror, but I knew then that whatever I looked like, it was a visual representation of how I felt.

The table was a jumble of folders and papers that looked as if they needed to be in some of those folders.

"What's all of this?"

I could see his eyes x-raying the folder my hand was reaching for.

"That one...is actually all yours today."

When I opened it and saw the word 'FoxDie' in the first line of text, I quickly closed the cover back. It was still way too early to look at that.

"Thanks."

"Don't sound like that, Olivia. Today will be a short day. I promise."

I was going to ask him to define his idea of a short day before I realized he had zipped out of the kitchen. This left Snake and I to be awkward with each other.

"About last night, Olivia..."

"I know, I know. It never happened. It's already forgotten, Snake."

He nodded as if it had been my idea to try and pretend like it never happened which only made me annoyed. I rolled my eyes—something I hadn't consciously remembered doing since I was sixteen–and shook my head.

"Wait! No, I don't mean that." However irritated I had become with him, he felt it ten fold against himself. He stared at a small area of square tile and walked over them to me. "Olivia, I don't think we'd ever work. But, I don't want you to think that I don't wish that it would."

"I don't think I've ever had someone break up with me before breakfast."

I'm sure he smiled, but I had already wrapped my arms around his neck. I felt his head bury into my shoulder as he embraced me back. Words would have ruined it, so we both didn't say anything. There was a perfect understanding of everything without them.

"Olivia," I heard Hal almost sing from another room, "I need your help with something."

"I think that's my cue," I said. I took a deep breath and without thinking about it too much, I let him go in every way that I needed to.

My brain shut off for the most part for the time I helped Hal. Lines of text, graphs, figures, medical documents, they call came through without leaving a single trace of ever having been there. But one single thought did seem to stick. That ceiling fan.

It would stay up.

I didn't hate it anymore.


	2. Fix You

"**Fix You**"

**Olivia** took a vanity sip from her glass to ignore the silence while she waited for Otacon to respond. She found air that thick hard to breathe but decided she would stand it as long as he would. When she looked at him again, his expression hadn't changed and he seemed no closer to giving her an answer than he had been a few moments earlier.

"I don't think that's such a good idea, Olivia," he finally said as she had expected.

"Well, what makes it a bad idea?"

"It's not a _bad_ idea. It'll just never work."

"That sounds to me like you think it's a bad idea."

He sighed deeply, "I just know Snake and he'll never go for hypnosis. Besides, I think it could be dangerous diving into Snake's psyche like that."

"Well, I'm not going to be fishing around, permanently rearranging anything in his mind. It's the only way I can help him since I know he won't talk to me about his past."

"You and I both know that Snake's past is not a pleasant one and whatever he doesn't talk about is probably for good reason."

Otacon watched Olivia's index finger travel the rim of the glass. Clockwise and then counterclockwise.

"What happened in Zanzibar Land all those years ago, Hal?"

He shook his head.

"I don't know. He doesn't talk about it, I don't ask."

"Do you know of someone named Gray Fox?"

"He was a friend of Snake's", he answered after a bit of hesitation, "He made an unscheduled appearance at Shadow Moses eight years ago but, he more or less saved us all because of it. Look, Olivia, you still haven't told me what this about? Why is this so important?"

Olivia leaned back on the sofa, crossed her arms in front of her, and sighed deeply.

"I'm worried about Snake. For the past week, he's been having these nightmares that are bordering on the edge of night terrors. When I asked him about them, he mentioned Zanzibar Land but didn't tell me anything else. If I could get Snake to talk about what happened in Zanzibar through hypnosis, I think I could stop the nightmares."

"Olivia, I know you care about Snake as do I…but he's not like other people. He's seen and done things that neither of us should ever have to know about. I would suggest leaving Gray Fox and Zanzibar Land wherever you found them."

"I can't do that, Hal," she answered honestly.

The sound of Olivia's glass clinking with the glass of the table bounced around between his ears for second.

"Olivia, could you please just trust me on this?"

"I do trust you. I believe everything you say about Snake. I'm just not listening."

Olivia could see the moment he decided he wasn't going to win against her. His shoulders relaxed and the hint of smirk appeared on his face.

"Your mind's already made up. You didn't need my opinion."

"No, I wanted your approval. But, I guess we can't have everything."

"How are you going to talk Snake into him letting you hypnotize him?"

"I haven't made it that far, yet. But, I figured I wouldn't use the word 'hypnotize'. I don't really feel like I'm doing that, anyway. I'd be simply...exploring his subconscious memories."

"Well, here's some advice: Don't use those words either when you're running this idea by Snake."

Olivia lightly chuckled under her breath.

"You know, when I was a kid and I wanted to ask my mom or dad for something I knew they'd say 'no' to, I'd ask them while they were sleeping. It didn't always work to get them to say 'yes', but at least they couldn't not say 'yes' either."

Otacon smiled at her until he realized her expression suddenly change.

"Oh, no. Olivia, what are you thinking? You can't get Snake's permission while he's sleeping."

"I know that," she told him which made him even more suspicious, "I wasn't planning to.

**There** hadn't been a whole lot of talking after Olivia told Otacon what she was going to do. Talking had never gotten Otacon very far with her before, so he hadn't even tried this time. He had sighed deeply and gave the warning: "You don't know what you're getting yourself into."

"Don't worry, Hal, this method is safe."

"It's not the method. I know that hypnotizing someone while their sleeping doesn't pose a risk, but I'm worried of what you might find."

"I won't be regressing Snake. He won't be reliving any of the events we talk about. I'll be asking him to recall them, so he'll be in his current mind set the whole time. The hypnotizing only serves as a tool to make him open up and tell the truth."

She felt Otacon's hands caress her shoulders and his eyes fix on hers.

"Just...be careful, okay?"

Olivia didn't get the look in Otacon's eyes until she found herself looking at Snake. She prepared what excuse she'd use as she closed the door, in case it was the move that woke him up and started the interrogation.

While most people became relaxed while sleeping, Snake's body became a ball of clenched and tense muscles. Olivia figured it had something to do with the feeling of vulnerability someone like him might feel in such an out of control situation.

Olivia ran her hands over his shoulders, arms, and chest.

"You're okay right now, Snake. I'm not here to harm you."

As she talked, his body began to relax and almost go limp. It was the first confirmation that her crazy idea might actually work. Olivia quickly glanced over some notes she'd jotted down and turned her attention back to him.

"You're going to follow my voice, okay, Snake? So whatever danger or harm you're in, my voice is going to lead you out of it right now and take you to the place you feel the most content and secure. Do you have a place like that?"

He nodded.

"Where are you right now?"

"I'm with her."

"Meryl?"

"No..."

"Who are you with, then?"

"Olivia..."

Olivia held her breath for a moment and then let it out, careful to not change the tone she was talking to him in.

"And why are you the happiest there?"

"Because I care about her," he paused a moment and then added, " I don't want to watch her die."

"Olivia is safe. Don't worry about her, Snake," she chose her words carefully so to not to say anything that might hint to her being the one talking.

Satisfied, he nodded. Olivia switched on the tape recorder in her pocket.

"Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?"

"Okay."

"What happened in Zanzibar Land?"

"Zanzibar..."

His voice trailed off as the events flashed back to him almost as harshly as they had happened.

"Snake?"

When he remained quiet, Olivia feared she had somehow yanked him out of his hypnotic state.

"We were on separate sides. He was going to kill me if I didn't kill him first."

"Kill who?"

"I think he wanted it that way but I didn't..."

"Snake, you're talking in fragments. Kill who?" she repeated this time thinking she didn't want to know the answer anymore.

"Gray Fox."

It still wasn't common knowledge that Snake had battled and tried to kill Gray Fox, and even though she thought she had prepared herself for anything, it shook her. She rested her shaking frame on the edge of Snake's bed when she felt her legs might collapse from under her.

"Snake..."

"Everyone called me a hero. They wanted to shake my hand...but they didn't want to see the blood on it."

"But Gray Fox didn't die," she reminded him, "He saved you at Shadow Moses."

"No, I killed him. The man at Shadow Moses...that was a shell of his former self. That wasn't Gray Fox."

"You were a soldier. You did what you were ordered to do in Zanzibar Land." He fell silent again. "Didn't you move to Alaska after that?"

"Yes, but it didn't help me to forget. Drinking did, though. So, I drank until I couldn't tell where one day ended and the next began. I drank until I didn't care anymore."

Olivia fought the urge to reach out and touch him, afraid it might break the hypnosis. Snake shifted a bit in the silence of the room. The unpleasantness of remembering those things was starting to show.

"Did you ever think about...did you ever think about ending it all?"

Without hesitation, he answered, "I can't remember too many days where I didn't. But, that's when I started dog sled racing."

Olivia chuckled a bit through the tears that had begun to form in her eyes.

"That's right. I almost forgot about that. Solid Snake the dog sled racer. I would have paid good money to see that."

"In competition, they usually called me David."

"David", she tested it out on her own tongue and concluded that he definitely looked like a 'Dave', "Is that your real name?"

"It's the one that was given to me."

"By who?"

"Jim and Beth."

"Were they your parents?"

There was a sadness that settled in his voice.

"They raised me, but I was never really their son."

"They adopted you?"

"No. They were forced by the _Les Enfants Terribles_ project to take care of me. Probably because of Jim's family history with the government."

"The terrible children?" Olivia translated out loud, "What's that?"

"It was an experiment that was used to create three direct copies of Big Boss, the greatest soldier in the world at the time, on the genetics level."

"Like...cloning?" Olivia almost felt silly for saying it until Snake nodded his head.

He continued. "I didn't find out until later, but Jim and Beth, they always knew. They tried their best to treat me like their own, but I could always tell. When I was ten, they finally had a child of their own, Claira, and for a while, it was like we were a family. But Claira became really sick and died before she was even two. After that, Jim and Beth barely noticed I existed. When I was sixteen, that's when Big Boss came and took me under his wing. I didn't know what had become of them for the next seven years but right before I joined FOX HOUND, I found out that Beth had died in an accident a few months before and Jim, shortly afterwards of an accidental overdose of antidepressants."

Olivia had stopped taking notes. Her hands trembled as she shut off the tape recorder. She doubted she'd want to remember any of the conversation in either form.

"I'm sorry, Snake," she realized her voice was trembling and could shatter like glass at any moment.

"Maybe I was supposed to but I never hated them. As crazy as it sounds, I miss them sometimes."

The dam of emotion she had been plugging with a cork finally broke. She hid her face behind her hands and quietly sobbed into them.

"Olivia..."

Snake's eyes were fixed on her. When she looked up at him, he knew immediately that she knew things about him. Things that had altered how she looked at him forever. All he could do was watch in silence when she rushed out of the room.

The hallway had grown in miles and the walk to anywhere seemed to take too long. Olivia quickly ducked into the first open door.

"Are you okay?" Two arms suddenly moved around her.

She nodded and looked up to meet Otacon's eyes which she noticed immediately weren't behind glasses.

"Really, I'm okay." she insisted, "I don't know what happened to me in there. I guess you can say 'I told you so' now."

"I'm not going to do that."

Olivia knew he wouldn't. But she wouldn't have been angry if he had. Instead, he held out a box of tissues in front of her. Olivia plucked out a few.

"I shouldn't have ever done that."

"It's only natural to want to fix the people you care about."

"Well, it's just like me to want to fix the most broken one I could find." Olivia dried her face one last time and exhaled deeply. "That's certainly the end of my repairing days."

"If anything, you should congratulate yourself on being able to hypnotize Snake."

"It wasn't that hard, actually." It hadn't seemed strange until the moment she vocalized it.

"That's strange. I tried it a few years ago on him and it didn't work at all."

Olivia's words hooked in her throat.

"What?"

"Yeah, I tried it to get him to stop smoking. Didn't work though as you may be able to tell. I thought that maybe he was just one of those people, ya know? That's why I told you it wouldn't work but, I guess I was wrong." He pulled his glasses out of lab coat pocket and adjusted them on his face, "But, anyway, I need to get back to work."

"Yeah. Work, of course," she blankly responded after beat.

Otacon followed Olivia's eyes to the blank spot on the wall she was staring at.

"See something I don't?"

She shifted her eyes and lightly shook off the spell.

"No. Thank you for everything, Hal. I don't know what I'd do without you sometimes."

The pieces whirled in her head and began to slowly take a shape that made her stomach drop.

**"We** were on separate sides. He was going to kill me if I didn't kill him first."

"Kill who?"

"I think he wanted it that way but I didn't..."

"Snake, you're talking in fragments. Kill who?"

She recited it quietly to herself as the tape played. She knew it better than she did any song. The words hadn't changed and she really didn't expect them to but she answered to the part of herself that kept rewinding the audio.

She found the pause button when she felt someone enter the room and placed the headphones around her neck.

"You want to see if you can pull the strings to make me dance, now?" She said without turning around to look at Snake. He folded his arms in front of him. Her tone told him she knew.

"You're not completely innocent you know."

Olivia whipped around in her chair. Her eyes were furious enough to shoot bolts of lightning.

"I was trying to help you and you were making a damn fool out of me!" She slammed down the eject button on the recorder and held the tape up in front of him. "How much of this is bullshit?" she demanded.

"None of it. I never lied to you."

"Yeah, right. Just like you didn't lie there pretending to be hypnotized. 'I'm with Olivia because I care about her'," she mocked before chucking the tape across the room, "How did you ever keep such a straight face?"

The gravel in Snake's voice had turned into a low growl.

"Well, you got what you wanted, right? Some deep, dark secrets to help you gage just how screwed up I really am. Tell me, Olivia, where on your scale does a cloned, neglected soldier who killed his best friend and father rank?"

"Well, considering most of it was probably lies, I couldn't tell you."

"I'm sure the real details of my perfect, suburban life would have been too boring and given you nothing to go over with a fine tooth comb and analyze."

"Oh, it was never about that, Snake," she snapped back at him, "I hated seeing you suffer and I thought I could stop your nightmares with hypnosis."

"Well, me and my nightmares were just fine before you tried to... exercise me!"

Olivia's frustration peaked into a throaty laugh.

"You know what? Good, because I'm done. I don't care anymore. I shouldn't have cared in the first place. You and all your demons can go to hell!"

The door almost sounded as if it had come off it's hinges. Moments later, Snake heard another door slam and then a dense silence. The edge of a notebook with thoughts almost running off the pages caught his eye. He scanned it quickly but got snagged on to a few lines, reading them over and over until it didn't look like words to him anymore:

_Jim and Beth. No last names. His face as he talks, uncomfortable. This isn't easy for him. I could be making things worse by letting this go on. _

_Going to end session. I can't do this. I'm crying now. Perhaps for him. No matter how much I cry, it'll never be enough for him._

"Damnit."

**Olivia's** realization of her limited surroundings were immediate. She really had been living in the middle of a woodsy nowhere but hadn't noticed or cared until she didn't want to be there. She looked back at the gray walls of where she had just escaped from one more time and silently apologized to Hal on the other side of them.

Hal's had been the last face she'd seen and it had been a blur.

He leaped out of his chair when she rushed by his doorway. "What happened?" She quickly twisted her arm free of his grip and knocked past him. He followed her pace all the way to the door and called to her one last time over the explosion of the door.

She walked slowly but directionless keeping an eye on the setting sun, but never getting the urge to turn around. Being lost felt better than going back.

The endless roll of trees broke around a small, oddly misplaced lake. She stepped over the logs that fenced around it and palmed the ground for a dry patch.

The tree tops created a jagged and broken frame to the painting of the dusk sky and she let it swallow her whole. She pulled her knees into her chest and ran her hands over the parts of her legs not covered by her jeans. When she noticed a figure approaching, she held out her hand in a silent protest and the figure stopped.

"You win, okay? I'm a terrible person. I just want to be alone."

"Otacon's worried about you."

"Well, when you go back, you can tell him that I'm fine."

"C'mon, Olivia. It's freezing out here."

"Snake, why are you here?"

She heard a notebook land near her feet.

"None of that means anything, now." She said without bothering to look at it. She wrapped her arms around her legs tighter when Snake crossed over the log border. The moonlight spot lit the area next to her that he sat in. "So, how'd you find me?" She asked, knowing it was a sign of her walls lowering.

"Your nanos."

"Great." She replied dryly. She shook the dirt off the notebook before she picked it up.

"You gonna toss that?"

"Nope. Why'd you lie there and tell me all of this, Snake?"

He didn't look at her when he spoke.

"It felt nice to finally tell someone."

Olivia ran her hands over the goosebumps on her arms knowing it was only half from the dropping temperature.

"I really wish I could have helped you."

"The nightmares will never go away, Olivia. They're as permanent as the scars I got from living through them. I've just learned to live with them over the years. All of them."

Snake's words felt disconnected from the rest of him, like his mind and his mouth were on two separate tracks. She quietly moved to close in the space between them.

"You've dreamt about watching me die, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"I have them, too." She felt his eyes finally look to her, "I'm always sitting in that same stupid chair, watching Ocelot search for the next location on my body to send a bullet into. And then, he tells me that he's going to kill you, I can feel myself get scared for the first time. Not of Ocelot, but...for you. But then, I get this feeling that you're going to be okay," Olivia's tone lightened as the feeling came back to her, "That I shouldn't worry because he can't harm you. And then, he holds the gun to my head and pulls the trigger and I just except it." Olivia's fingertips ran over the bullet wound on her leg.

"I don't regret what happened to me a year ago, but I know that you still do."

"I shouldn't have put you in danger."

"Forgive yourself, Snake," her words delivered as sharply as the images from the video had, "Why would you blame yourself for something that I never blamed you for?"

He nodded. "Okay, Olivia."

She looked up and let the force from the approaching breeze whip her hair across her face.

"'And in the end, it's not the years in your life that counts. It's the life in your years.' I've always really liked that quote."

"What made you think about it?"

"Don't know. Just felt appropriate." Snake shook the eerie feeling the quote had given him and stood up along side her. "What do you say we get out of here?"

Olivia slipped her arm through Snake's as they walked back.

"There's something that I've been meaning to ask you." Snake said after a they had been walking in silence for a while. In the distance, she could see the gray paint of their building.

"And what's that?"

"How'd you find out I wasn't hypnotized?"

She smiled. "Hal told me that he had tried to hypnotize you a few years ago to get you to stop smoking but that it hadn't worked."

"That's pretty funny."

"And why is that so funny?"

"Otacon never tried to hypnotize me."

"What?" Olivia yanked back on his arm, halting him as well.

Snake let a grin grow across his face that immediately spread to her, but not before sticking an elbow in his side as they continued.

It's only natural to want to fix the people you care about, she thought to herself, but they're probably not as broken as they look.


End file.
